National Security Brief: August 16, 2011

— Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu travelled to Damascus on Monday to deliver Turkey’s “final” warning to the Syrian government to “immediately and unconditionally” halt its crackdown on civilian anti-government demonstrators.

— The White House said Monday that despite the large-scale attack yesterday in Iraq that killed more than 70 people, there are no changes in the timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

— The U.S. military awarded at least 20 companies new contracts in Afghanistan worth a combined $1 billion in a step to shift contracts away from contractors who paid Taliban and Afghan warlords to ensure the safe arrival of convoys.

— As the U.S. military begins to drawdown from Afghanistan, commanders are ramping up the controversial Afghan Local Police program to help boost local defenses.

— Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, a top Libyan security official, apparently defected yesterday, unexpectedly arriving in Cairo in a private plane with his family. The move comes as rebels are closing in on the capital Tripoli.

— While congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011, no one knows exactly how much the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost. A recent Brown University study showed that the wars have cost the U.S. $3.6 trillion, more than $12,000 per American.